Karen Holtzblatt claims to know what makes things cool. She fifty-fifty has a volume out bearing the extremely literal title: What Makes Things Cool? But I am suspicious of anyone who claims to empathise what makes things absurd and sells his or her know-how to gigantic corporations (in Holtzblatt'south case: LG, Walmart, Nokia, John Deere, and others). In item, I disagreed with something Holtzblatt wrote in her book: "We all know cool products when we encounter them." Cool, I think, is learned. Nosotros are social creatures, afterward all, and we look to a select few to help us develop our tastes–which is why we call such people tastemakers.

Yet Holtzblatt seems to be proverb that coolness can literally be designed into a product. I see coolness every bit fleeting, something scarce. She says there is a connection between learning and joy and the perception of cool. I think cool is external. We like certain things and find them absurd because they tell the world something about u.s. and how nosotros'd similar to be perceived. You could play it cool, in other words, merely could you really be cool? Maybe, if you were The Fonz. The rest of us are just faking it.

She and I fundamentally disagree nigh the nature of cool, and disagreements make for skillful chat, so I called her recently to talk about the ideas in her book.

FAST COMPANY: What is it that you lot actually do, and how did y'all come up to do that?

KAREN HOLTZBLATT: I'll give you my usual pitch. When I came into the high-tech industry over twenty years ago, my training was equally a psychologist, in cognitive psychology, and this was right when technology started beingness used by real human beings–people who were not engineers.

How was being a psychologist useful then?

There was the effect of nobody really wanting to empathise how the technology was put together. And dorsum in those days, there were hardly any usability engineers, permit alone UX [user experience] or UI [user interface] designers. I had a much broader sort of practical groundwork and had already basically been doing usability testing in my lab work and out in the field. People were like, "What do you mean y'all'll become out and talk to people about what they're doing and how they do it?" At that place'south some paper someplace where I'g called a mystic and heretic.

The typical fashion then, and still, in some ways, was to ask people what they want. But people don't actually know what they want. People don't know technology or themselves or their lives. And also, we aren't interested in truth, we're interested in making things people love. Out of this came my kickoff volume, which is used by universities and companies all over the world, on user-centered blueprint processes. I'g known, now, every bit this sort of vocalism of understanding customers in the field. I would consider myself…well, people phone call me a guru.

Okay. This absurd thing: I don't think nosotros see eye to eye here. Your notion is that you can build something absurd.

That's right. If you retrieve about the idea that'due south–what'southward front end terminate design?

[Long break]

I don't know.

You come up with an idea, iterate, validate, and the user experience role is baked into that procedure. When we talk well-nigh the user experience, we're not talking about Lady Gaga absurd. The earth cool has a variety of meanings and assumptions. So what I wanted to know when I started researching absurd was what was going on such that people were exclaiming, could not stop talking nigh their engineering, that it itself had become cool.

How did you research this?

I went out into the field. I asked people, what were the dimensions that divers this experience, that the word cool was a geiger counter for.

That'southward a complicated way to put it!

Well, we didn't say exactly that. Nosotros started with 60 people and asked them to bring together their stuff, what they thought was absurd that had some technology component. When we talk about the results of this report, we go, "Look, it'south cool considering people brought this together and they said then." We went into their homes, each of the things–sometimes it was a radio or a vacuum cleaner; information technology was always their mobile device, their DVR, their large screen TV; every so often it was their car. The applied science devices were e'er at the top of the list.

Only you asked them–you lot said there had to be a applied science component.

Sure. But it besides could have been a fridge or a microwave. We then said, "Alright, show me what it does in your life during the construction of your solar day, and we looked at what was really going on and looked for themes. When we were done, there were seven cadre concepts that account for the driving issues around the user experience. The overarching experience is one of joy beingness ripped out of your guts.

I don't think I own any piece of engineering that makes me feel this style.

Well, what's interesting about joy is you tin can't cognitively create joy. You lot tin can't call up your way into joy. Only effectively your joy is attached to something that moved you. It's a trivial metaphysical–it moved you in your soul. Talking most their cool tools, people were going bananas. They talk about their phone the same mode people talk about a puppy.

I discover that kind of sad.

Well, if I had told designers to blueprint for joy, information technology would be simply as hopeless as maxim "design for cool." Simply the fact of the matter is that human beings–never forget I'm a developmental psychologist–are born with core concepts. Pocket-size children can experience joy. And it happens because of certain lived experiences. Touching, for example, is 1 of our most central human motives, which nosotros are supporting and so much more. Nosotros are touching things that were never touched earlier with applied science. The fashion that these core concepts work, the cool concepts, the more of them you lot touch on, the cooler your matter is.

What are the cool concepts?

The cool concepts are proprietary. Each concept has a gear up of x phrases. I don't want you lot to write the phrase, only you can write the concept.

Can we mayhap utilise an example? What's a piece of actually cool engineering today?

Look, for all really transformative technology that will rock the base of operations, something has to be so transformative that it punches a hole in man experience, and information technology goes "whoa," you know? The first product that probably did this for a lot of people was the spreadsheet.

(Literal sound of me doing a spit-take, only with air, so it's just pffffffffffffffffff)

No really! It allows you lot to do "what ifs," on a big calibration for the start time. It made the first Apple computer. If there wasn't a spreadsheet, that is the application that fabricated the box. In point of fact, it in one footstep was a sweeping change.


So where does Google Glass fall?

Pretend information technology's a image and this is a corporate experiment. Effectively, we don't know yet whether people desire something in their eyeball.

I don't think Google Glass is very cool.

Permit's use Google Glass as an example, and I'll tell y'all the seven absurd concepts. My daughter works for Google, by the way. So the outset and the nearly of import is the experience of accomplishments in life, the difference between doing a job efficiently and, y'all know–if you picket a little baby zip their zipper for the start time, and they break out into a joyous smile; when you endeavor doing something and y'all do it and you go, "yeah!" And people hate being bored: at the jitney terminate, in the doctors part, paying their bills. You could read your volume in the line now. We are at present designing for time–tiny bits of time at work or at home.

My problem is: I don't see the trouble with being bored. As well, by the way, I think a lot of us are non paying bills or reading, merely playing Candy Crush.

Well, the joy, the cool, is getting your overwhelming life done. And the requirement for Google Glass is, does it help me go my life done?

I thought, at this bespeak, the requirement is more like: We need people to exist Okay with this weird Internet face-camera so that they don't punch other people wearing information technology in the face.

That's role of the problem, certainly, simply if Glass was more useful, it would be more accustomed. Also, the e'er-on attribute is a problem. People break upward the day and self-interrupt. In the quondam days, they'd become upwardly, go to the bath, talk to someone. People don't want to exist doing chores during their core time, they desire to be doing it in dead time. Nosotros've always had these responsibilities, we've just never been able to handle them on the go. What I basically recall is that dads take been sticking their nose in the paper and hiding out in the bathroom for a very long time. Now it's not really different.

So engineering is escapist, and that'due south always been the allure.

Engineering is revealing what is core most humans. Escapism, accomplishment. Simply connectedness as well: Cool tools are assuasive distributed families and friendship groups to stay continued. Three of the core principles have to do with how ofttimes you touch, the conversational content, the collaboration and planning. What is Google Glass doing for connection? Is it really in the way of interacting with someone? The way laptops got in the way of relationships, with Google Glass you also don't have the power to share what you lot're looking at.

Besides, there really is no way to expect cool wearing it, allow's be honest.

That's it as well. If a product helps you lot do the things that make you a professional person, it doesn't just cool points for accomplishment, just for identity. So we gather data for relationships, your life, the nature of yourself. What makes you feel whole, complete, and joyous. Google Glass, really? Is that me? Is that who I want to be? Look at the first Sony Walkman: Black was for professionals, yellowish was for working-class. The only way spectacles are going to work…is if it helps y'all and says something about y'all in your profession.

I purchase that, because it seems like at present the only people who are routinely using glass are surgeons or technicians in the workplace. Certainly not and so much at bars while socializing. Then what'due south the final of these cool concepts.

The last 1 is sensation. Nosotros're built-in it. Kids are just sensual. Nosotros snuggle, we express joy in the current of air. At that place's joy just in sense that nosotros beloved the beauty of the aesthetics of things. People at present expect a modern, industrial design. If they don't have information technology, they don't like yous. But this is the least of import attribute, because if information technology doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't matter.